Improving display efficiency can reduce power dissipation in mobile devices (e.g. phones, watches or other wearables, tablets, and notebooks). To date, liquid crystal display (LCD) technology has been the dominant display technology for both infrastructure devices (e.g., television) and mobile devices. Current LCD based displays only pass through ˜5% of light from a backlight source (e.g., LED or CFL, etc.) leading to poor power efficiency, insufficient daylight display illumination, and poor viewing angles.
Considerable research and development has been expended on organic light emitting diode (OLED) display technology. OLED displays improve display power efficiency relative to LCD, though not dramatically. OLED technology also currently suffers from color fading, leading to decreased display endurance/lifetime. Another next-generation display technology under investigation is crystalline LED, also referred to as an inorganic LED (iLED) display or an RGB micro(μ) LED emissive display. A crystalline μLED display relies on an array of semiconductor LEDs. A μLED display, for example, may utilize RGB LED emitters for a picture element, or pixel. Relative to an OLED display, a μLED display has the potential to reduce power dissipation by an order of magnitude. Micro LED displays therefore hold the promise of significantly increasing battery life and enabling very high resolution displays in next generation device platforms.